Lula Opens His October Re-Election Campaign in São Bernardo do Campo

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva formally opened his campaign for re-election on Sunday before about 20,000 supporters of his Workers' Party (PT) in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial city where he first made his name as a trade union leader.

The venue was deliberately symbolic: Lula had addressed striking metalworkers in the same stadium in 1979. On Sunday he thanked workers who had believed that someone from their own background could represent them. The setting anchored the campaign in the industrial organised-labour tradition that built the PT.

Yet the same event exposed the party's structural problem. Brazil's regular, formally contracted workforce has fallen to 38.2% of employment as of December, while central bank estimates suggest the number of workers engaged through digital platforms rose 170% between 2015 and 2025 to 2.1 million. Union membership density has nearly halved over the past decade to 8.9%. Lula acknowledged that his party must adapt to a different working world.

The campaign now moves toward Brazil's October presidential election, with the president trying to convert his personal history as a factory worker into a message that reaches a younger, more digital and less unionised workforce.

Why Lula's PT Faces a New Kind of Brazilian Worker

Beneath the rally, the labour statistics tell a specific political story: the institutions that historically delivered votes and volunteers to the PT are weaker than at any point in Lula's five-decade career.

Lula's PT and the shrinking union base

Union density of 8.9% means fewer workers are reachable through the traditional union halls and workplace structures that once formed the PT's backbone. The formal employment share of 38.2% points to a labour market in which stable, registered jobs no longer dominate. For a party built on organised labour, those numbers reduce its most reliable mobilisation channel.

Why platform workers are harder to mobilise

The estimated 2.1 million platform-mediated workers represent fast growth, but they are dispersed, often classified outside formal employment and weakly tied to conventional unions. Their working relationships are shaped by apps and algorithms rather than factory floors or union branches. That makes Lula's factory-worker biography less immediately relevant to a generation that may never have belonged to a union.

What the labour data means for the October vote

The campaign is therefore not only a re-election bid; it is a test of whether the PT can update its appeal without losing its traditional identity. The president's statement that the party must adjust to a different working world suggests the campaign knows the risk. The next phase will show whether that adjustment produces concrete proposals for platform work or remains symbolic campaign language.

What Brazil's Campaign Labour Debate Means for Business and Investors

For businesses and investors with Brazilian exposure, the campaign's labour-market framing is the specific signal to follow between now and October.

  • Expect Lula to speak directly to Brazil's estimated 2.1 million platform workers; any concrete proposals on app-based work could reshape labour costs and classification for platform companies operating in Brazil.
  • Watch whether the PT pairs the 38.2% formal-employment figure with promises on payroll taxes, social-security financing or formalisation incentives — these would be the proposals most likely to affect employers across the economy.
  • Treat the union-density figure of 8.9% as a warning that the campaign may shift from traditional labour rhetoric to broader, less institutional voter outreach; that shift, not the Sunday rally, will indicate the policy direction of a possible second Lula term.